1 November 2011

Those of you who are artists, or who consider themselves as creative, is your self-confidence burdened by the feeling that you’re a fraud, only copying works that have been invented before?

Don’t worry, no one has ever had a truly novel idea. Even Thomas Edison.

Everything is a Remix, a short series by filmmaker Kirby Ferguson, presents influence and appropiation as an integral part of human creativity. Spanning from Led Zeppelin to George Lucas and from Johannes Gutenberg to Xerox, the series explains in exhausting detail how progress is based on mutations and combinations of pre-existing works.

Another important video in the theme is Nate Harrison’s story about a drum beat called Amen Break, certainly the most remixed sample in music history, which tells several essential details of musical development after the 70’s and insights about the vague border between appropiation and creation.

In the words of Alex Kozinski, “Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new”.